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Today was the first day of camp! I am thrilled to be running a “camp for bookworms” through my local community college. Last fall I read about Thalia Kid’s Book Club Camp at Symphony Space in New York City. I was immediately overcome with jealous because that camp sounded like my dream as a kid. A place to read books and talk about more books? HEAVEN!

When my local community college campus sent out an email looking for counselors and camp ideas, I decided to throw my idea out there. A camp for bookworms that would be aimed at middle school students. To my surprise, they loved the idea! Then I spent a few months picking three books for the students to read before coming to camp so that we could focus on them during the week of camp. It was very tough, but I finally chose Mike Mullins’ Ashfall, Anne Ursu’s Breadcrumbs, and Karen Sandler’s Tankborn. My goal was to choose awesome, well-written books that the campers most likely would not have read before.

Today was our first day of camp and it went really well! I have a small group of students, and an even mix of boys and girls. They are all entering 7th or 8th grade and they are avid readers. We started out by introducing ourselves and talking about our book preferences this morning. I have a paranormal fan, action fan, humor fan, romance, classics, and lots more. One student is currently reading Sherlock Holmes while another is working on his own novel. I’m very impressed! We also had a great discussion about e-readers. I was surprised to hear that most of the students do not use e-readers, and if they have one it was usually a gift. Those with gifted e-readers said they use them to read classics or free stories/novels posted in the e-bookstore. In fact, they were pretty big fans of self-published shorter works. That’s a first for me! But they were unanimous in declaring their love for paper books. E-readers were more of a matter of convenience, used on vacations or while waiting around in places without reading material (usually a phone was used in that case).

We spent today talking about Mike Mullins’ Ashfall, in preparation for s Skype call with him tomorrow morning. The kids can’t wait to chat to Mike Mullins after our talk today. We discussed our favorite parts of the books, how we might react in the event of a supervolcano reaction, and other book recommendations for those who enjoyed Mike Mullins’ Ashfall. After lunch, we watched a 30 minute BBC documentary about the Yellowstone supervolcano so that we all have a good grasp on the scientific possibility of an eruption in the next 50,000 years. That will give you pause!

I also started a read aloud with my campers today. I wanted a book that we could definitely finish this week, as I don’t want to leave them hanging once camp ends. The choice was a no-brainer for me. Thus, we began to share Liar & Spy by Rebecca Stead today. It went over really well! We are all looking forward to reading more tomorrow.

It was a fantastic day and time flew by. I am so looking forward to tomorrow! We will be talking to Mike Mullin, reading our books, enjoying a read aloud, watching some book trailers, writing our own post-apocalyptic scenes, and then we will dive into Anne Ursu’s Breadcrumbs for the second half of the day. It’s going to be a great week!

As we were wrapping up our day, one of the campers raised her hand. When I looked over, she quietly said, “This if off-topic, but I just want to say how glad I am that I found this camp. I love to read and not many teachers encourage me. Most of the time they yell at me to stop reading. So this camp reminded me that it’s ok to read.”

Well, that just about broke my heart. She went on to tell me that her 3rd grade teacher caught her reading under her desk and marched over to her, tore the book out of her hand, proceeded to yell at her and humiliate her, and tossed the book to the front of the room. The worst part? The camper told me, “I wasn’t mad at her for yelling at me, because I guess I was breaking the rules. But I was so mad at her for disrespecting my book and losing my page when she threw the book. I’ve never been able to forgive her for that.”

I was speechless. All teachers should be encouraging readers, not humiliating them for reading under their desk, looking for more time to read. It’s one thing to guide a student back to the topic at hand. Sometimes it just needs to be done. But to humiliate a young reader? To throw their book across the room? To lose their page? That’s so disrespectful. Thankfully, this child was a reader and always will be. But a more reluctant reader, maybe one who just found that perfect book, might be convinced to never pick up a book again after an experience like that.

And that’s why I am thrilled to be running my bookworm camp this summer. There are lots of readers out there dying for a space where they can share their favorite hobby. I am happy to provide that for them. We have four more days of camp and they are going to be amazing!